Installing Emacs 23 from CVSBazaar source on Ubuntu HardyKarmic

I have been using the emacs-snapshot package in Ubuntu Hardy. However, when I tried to use Tramp, I got an error message: Variable binding depth exceeds max-specpdl-size. I couldn't find out how to fix this, and I didn't want to use Emacs 22.3 because it doesn't have Xft (anti-aliased fonts), so I decided to live on the bleeding edge and install Emacs 23 from CVS. Besides the INSTALL and INSTALL.CVS files, I also used theBlackDragon's article for reference.

Update 2008-10-09: I just found that Romain Francoise maintains an emacs-snapshot Debian package and it has been adapted for Ubuntu. This is an alternative to installing from source.

Update 2010-01-09: Since Emacs has switched from CVS to Bazaar, I've updated these instructions to use Bazaar. Also, I'm now running on Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala instead of Ubuntu Hardy.

Update 2012-09-19: Here are some additional Ubuntu 12.04 packages I needed to install Emacs 24.2.

$ sudo apt-get install libgif-dev
$ sudo apt-get install libtiff4-dev
$ sudo apt-get install xaw3dg-dev
$ sudo apt-get install librsvg2-dev
$ sudo apt-get install libmagick++-dev
$ sudo apt-get install libgpm-dev
$ sudo apt-get install libgconf2-dev
$ sudo apt-get install libselinux1-dev
$ sudo apt-get install libm17n-dev
$ sudo apt-get install libotf-dev 

• Install Bazaar

  $ sudo apt-get install bzr
  

• Get the source code from the Bazaar repository

  $ cd ~/incoming
  $ bzr branch http://bzr.savannah.gnu.org/r/emacs/trunk emacs_trunk
  

• Read the INSTALL and INSTALL.BZR files in ~/incoming/emacs_trunk

• Install prerequisites:

  $ sudo apt-get install build-essential
  $ sudo apt-get build-dep emacs23
  

  To see what is installed by build-dep, see the emacs23 karmic package page

• Configure. The argument --prefix=/home/saltycrane/lib/emacs-bzr-20100210 means I am installing Emacs in /home/saltycrane/lib/emacs-bzr-20100210.

  $ cd ~/incoming/emacs_trunk
  $ ./configure --prefix=/home/saltycrane/lib/emacs-bzr-20100210
  

• Per the INSTALL.BZR file, I needed to do a make bootstrap instead of make because some files, such as byte-compiled lisp files are not stored in Bazaar. Note, this takes a long time (over 10 min for me).

  $ make bootstrap
  

• Make (Optional)

  $ make
  

• Test it (Optional)

  $ src/emacs -q
  

• Install

  $ make install
  

• Create symlinks (~/bin is already on my PATH)

  $ ln -s ~/lib/emacs-bzr-20100210 ~/lib/emacs
  $ cd ~/bin
  $ ln -s ../lib/emacs/bin/* .
  

  Alternatively, I could add ~/lib/emacs-bzr-20100210/bin to my PATH.

Now I have "Pretty Emacs" with working Tramp for remote file access. It also has multi-tty support which is supposed to be very cool (but I haven't tried it yet) is very cool (e.g. for displaying my running desktop emacs process on my Android phone.)

Error messages

• configure: error: You do not seem to have makeinfo >= 4.6, and your
  source tree does not seem to have pre-built manuals in the `info' directory.
  Either install a suitable version of makeinfo, or re-run configure
  with the `--without-makeinfo' option to build without the manuals.
  

  Solution:

  $ sudo apt-get install texinfo
  

• configure: error: The following required libraries were not found:
       libjpeg libgif/libungif libtiff
  Maybe some development libraries/packages are missing?
  If you don't want to link with them give
       --with-jpeg=no --with-gif=no --with-tiff=no
  as options to configure
  

  Solution:

  $ sudo apt-get install libjpeg-dev libgif-dev libtiff4-dev
  

• Warning: arch-dependent data dir (/home/saltycrane/lib/emacs-bzr/libexec/emacs/23.1.92/i686-pc-linux-gnu/) does not exist.
  Warning: Lisp directory `/home/saltycrane/lib/emacs-bzr/share/emacs/23.1.92/site-lisp' does not exist.
  Warning: Lisp directory `/home/saltycrane/lib/emacs-bzr/share/emacs/site-lisp' does not exist.
  Warning: Lisp directory `/home/saltycrane/lib/emacs-bzr/share/emacs/23.1.92/lisp' does not exist.
  Warning: Lisp directory `/home/saltycrane/lib/emacs-bzr/share/emacs/23.1.92/leim' does not exist.
  Warning: Could not find simple.el nor simple.elc
  

  This happened because I originally used ./configure --prefix=/home/saltycrane/lib/emacs-bzr and then renamed ~/lib/emacs-bzr to ~/lib/emacs-bzr-20100210. Solution: don't rename the directory.